The
Man of Steel vs. Lex Schumer And General Zod WarrenGrassTopsUSA Exclusive Commentary
By Don Feder
May 4, 2017

Next year, a cultural icon will reach the ripe old age of 80. He was born in the depths of the Great Depression
– created by two sons of Jewish immigrants living in Cleveland – and debuted in June 1938, a year before the outbreak of World War II, in Action Comics #1.

He's been depicted in comic books, and portrayed on television and in the movies. Eleven actors have played him on the big and small screen, from Kirk Alyn (1948) to Henry Cavill (2016), and including the ill-fated George Reeves and Christopher Reeve.

He's been called the Man of Steel and the Last Son of Krypton. At the beginning of each episode of TV series, he was introduced as "the strange visitor from another planet who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men."

He's Superman, and his ethos could be a conservative credo. "And who disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way."

Truth, justice and the American way seem to be on the way out. General Zod and
The New York Times tell us that truth is relative. Black Lives Matter and its leftist allies seek to replace equality before the law with what they call "racial justice." We're told that the notion of an "American way" is absurdly outdated and chauvinistic. (It might even be hateful to the snowflakes you meet on the street.) The exception is when it's used by the left, as in the bizarro People for the American Way.

Truth is reality. It's immutable – not subject to alteration or revision based on agenda or whim.

Man-made global warming isn't true. It's an ideology-driven scam whose goals are to transfer wealth from America to the Third World, and power from the individual to the state. Its more radical proponents seek to repeal the industrial revolution.

The environmental hysterics held their Peoples Climate March in DC on April 29. (Why are they always "the People"?) Celebrity marchers included Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore, who once predicted that sea-levels would rise so rapidly, due to melting polar icecaps, that in a few years
Lower Manhattan would be under water, and investment bankers at Goldman Sachs would
come to work in wetsuits.

MIT Professor emeritus Richard Lindzer calls climate alarmism a cult. "As with any cult, once the mythology of the cult begins falling apart, instead of saying
'oh we were wrong,' they get more fanatical."

In January, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced, amid media fanfare, that 2016 was the hottest year on record – in fact, the hottest in 137 years. Assuming NOAA's calculations are correct, the difference between 2016 and 2015 was 0.04 degrees Celsius (four one-hundredths of one degree). And the
Wall Street Journal notes, "both 2015 and 2016 were major years for El Nino, a Pacific Trade Winds phenomenon known to produce temperature spikes."

It is true that an individual can no more change his sex than change his species. In truth, there are no "transgendered." A man can dress and talk like a woman. He can get the mainstream media to coo over his choice (which supposedly allows him to escape the bonds of biology) and the cultural left to bestow coveted victim status on him. Activists can intimidate school districts into allowing him access to the toilets and showers of the other sex. He can even have himself surgically altered to resemble a woman. But he can't change his genetic makeup. The XY chromosomes, which make him male, will remain.

In February, the U.S. Department of Education announced it would not support Obama's transgender school bathrooms lunacy. The ideology of sexual revolutionaries notwithstanding, Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane will remain male and female
– even if they change their names to Jessica and Larry.

Justice consists of treating individuals – not groups, but persons – according to their merits. The Goddess of Justice wears a blindfold
for a reason.

In 1963, Martin Luther King said that he dreamed of the day when his children would be judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin.

Black Lives Matter demands the opposite – "racial justice," which is the negation of color-blind justice. In violent confrontations between police and minorities – the former are always guilty, the latter are ever innocent.

For the race-obsessed, evidence is irrelevant. A grand jury refused to indict former Police Officer Darren Wilson who shot and killed Michael Brown (a strong-arm man who tried to grab his gun, and battered him in the process) in 2014. The Obama Justice Department (which rarely supported your local police) said Wilson couldn't be charged under federal Civil Rights law.

That there are more cop killings today isn't coincidental. On July 8, 2016, five Dallas police officers were murdered by snipers in the course of a Black Lives Matter rally.

In the first half of 2016, 24% of those shot and killed by the police were black – a group that comprises 13% of the population, but who commit half of all violent crimes. A police war on African Americans is a myth. The left's war on cops is a reality.

Sanctuary cities victimize Americans to protect criminal aliens. Americans everywhere should be outraged by the injustice of sanctuary cities. They flout the law in ways Democrats would never tolerate on taxes, guns or the environment.

Sanctuary cities are fiefdoms of the Democratic Party – like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. They draw illegals like magnets. The results are glaringly obvious. In 2015, Los Angeles saw a 19.9% increase in homicides, a 12.6% increase in rapes, an 8.6% increase in robberies, and a 27.5
% jump in aggravated assault. Angelinos pay the price for liberal compassion in blood.

Bill de Blasio, Rahm Emanuel and lawbreaking mayors across the country are accessories before the fact. They sacrifice public safety on the altar of partisan interests. (Illegal immigration is the health of the Democratic Party.) Congress which refuses to cut off federal funding for sanctuary cities or to fund a border wall, is equally guilty.

The American Way includes representative government, civil liberties and a decent respect for opposing points of view.

Campus storm troopers have turned academia into a fascist mini-state. The Nazi student organization took over German universities long before Hitler came to power.

That the University of California at Berkeley allows the mob to exercise a rioter's veto over Ann Coulter and other conservative speakers would be shocking if it weren't so commonplace.

Administrators would rather surrender (in some cases, proactively) than fight to preserve the academic freedom and
intellectual integrity that once were the bedrock of higher education. They are either paralyzed with fear of the student left or secretly sympathize with them.

Why have legislative and executive branches, if judges can govern from the bench? In separate rulings, the Supreme Court overturned the abortion and marriage laws of most states, by reading their opinions into the First Amendment.

Now activist judges are determined to nullify the president's attempts to control our borders and stop the influx of terrorists and criminals posing as refugees.

In February, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the president's order creating a moratorium on refugees from terrorist-rich countries was unconstitutional. In April, a U.S. District Court Judge in San Francisco (who was an Obama bundler before he went on the bench) said the president lacked the power to deny federal funding to cities which choose to defy our immigration laws. During his reign of error, no one said Obama lacked the authority to issue blanket amnesties.

Beyond all of this – from the Pilgrims to the Pledge of Allegiance – the American way is about God.

"The Adventures of Superman" ran from 1952 to 1958 (104 episodes in all). In 1954, at the request of President Eisenhower, Congress added "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. "Truth, justice and the American way," complimented "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

If you're looking for directions on joining the battle, they're listed under never-ending.

Much as some of us love him,
Superman is fictional, like man-made global warming and racial justice. Still,
the Man of Steel represents the best in us – idealism, patriotism, decency and
determination to fight for the common good.

Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant.
He also maintains a
Facebook page.